Summer Garden
by crism79
Summary: It was one of Ellen's favorite past-times, tending flowers. Neal reminisces with the help of a gift.


**Title: Summer Garden**

**Author:** **crism79**

**Rating:** PG

**Fandom:** White Collar

**Characters/Pairings**: Neal

**Spoilers:** Up until 4.10

**Word Count: **894

**Warnings:** this hasn't been beta'ed so all the mistakes are mine. If you spot one drop me a line, I try very hard to write good English and am always trying to improve and learn. And there's angst... lots of it.

**Acknowledgement: **This story was written for **elrhiarhodan**'s Prompfest VII and posted there originally for the prompt _Neal - Summer Garden_.

**Disclaimer:** No infringement intended, these characters belong (unfortunately) to USA network..

**Summary:** It was one of Ellen's favourite past-times, tending flowers. Neal reminisces with the help of a gift.

The colors and the fragrant scent of the flowers in the cool Spring air is what Neal remembers best from Ellen's garden. She had always taken extra care with it where they had lived and Neal had fond memories of hiding behind the multicolored bushes of hydrangeas playing hide and seek or laying on the grass looking at the sky on a lazy summer afternoon. It was his haven on many a occasion and even after he had left, the picture of Ellen busying herself tending the garden was an image that Neal had never forgotten. She especially loved the Summer garden, when the Petunias, hibiscus, daylilies, cornflowers, marigolds, hydrangeas came to their splendor showing off their bright vibrant colors.

Neal had never been good with flowers. Growing up he had seen the garden flourish and bloom into beautiful colors that he would capture on his sketchbook or on canvas. But growing them was an expertise that escaped him. Neal had tried and Ellen had attempted to explain how to do it, but after a few failed attempts that had led to dead plants he had resigned sadly to the fact that his hands were meant to give life to flowers on canvas, clay, or whatever material. Not to tend living ones.

Wherever they went, to whatever place they moved to while on WITSEC, Ellen always rebuilt the garden from scratch, with patient nurturing and caring hands that would smell of earth when she greeted him home from school. After he had run away he tried to ignore the memories the smell of the first rain on earth evoked. He wanted to hate it, hate everything to do with that past, but as time passed he realized that it was never Ellen or the time he spent with her that he hated. Neal had hated the lies told to protect him and the lie he had grown up to be, trying to be like his father the hero. What a joke. Eventually he found solace in those scent-triggered memories, it always made him feel warm and loved even if it was accompanied with nostalgia and regret.

Now all that was left from Ellen's garden was on his loft's table in a plastic pot. A hydrangea that she had given Neal as a welcome home gift when he had returned from Cape Verde. Neal had taken it in his hands knowing that it would eventually die and he told her so.

"No it won't," she reassured him with that kind smile and with the sort of certainty that left him believing without a shadow of a doubt that this was an immortal plant and it wouldn't die. "She's a survivor. It's from the garden of our first home. The one you planted."

The blossoms were deep blue the color of the sky, Ellen's favorite color, the color of his eyes. Neal had looked at it with mixed feelings playing inside him. He hadn't expected it, and it meant more to him than he could ever imagine. It was just a plant. A plant Ellen had kept all these years, kept safe, nourished and carried with her through the different cities and houses, wherever the Marshals moved her. A piece of him that she had kept alive. The regret of having left her hit him again then and Ellen had gathered him in her arms a hand stroking the hair at the back of his neck and Neal had only been able to say a grateful "thank you".

"You'll always be my Neal," she had whispered tenderly and he had closed his eyes letting those words full of meaning sink in. His heart small and his stomach in a knot, he had never been happier with the decision to return to New York.

Picking it up in his hands Neal feels a surge of anger flash through him burning hot and bright like a blazing fire and for a split second he wants to throw plant and pot against the silent stone gargoyles that guard the patio. The pain of having lost someone else in his life is like an open wound that reopens bleeding freely. It doesn't matter how angry he gets at the unfairness of everything, how much he feels like screaming or punching something, the plane won't stop burning and the bullet won't miss its target. Both women that had meant the world to Neal were gone and the world kept moving and he had to carry on. Even if he still bled from a salted wound.

Neal takes a deep breath to steady himself, the plant, now flowerless lays in his hands stripped from its blue blossoms. Just the green leaves remain with the promise of new flowers next summer. The plastic pot suddenly feels as constricting to the hydrangea as his tracking anklet around his ankle and its two mile radius. It needs a bigger pot on the patio so that its roots can freely expand and where it can thrive, grow and blossom, their vibrant blue flowers coloring his home.

A sad smile plays on his lips as Neal sets the pot carefully on the table as he realizes Ellen's message with this gift. One day he'll also be free of his restraint, but his roots, Neal knows now, are already deeply set in this concrete Summer garden.


End file.
